"Django Unchained" is nothing if not controversial. All the way back when the film was still in production in New Orleans, actor Samuel L. Jackson found himself defending director Quentin Tarantino's stylistic slant on America's history of slavery. Then, last week, director Spike Lee spoke out against it in a brief but sharply worded statement released through his Twitter account. Most recently, "Training Day" director Antoine Fuqua -- who recently shot "Olympus Has Fallen" in Shreveport with Gerard Butler -- has come to Tarantino's defense.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter while in Italy for the 17th Capri, Hollywood Film Festival, Fuqua didn't so much debate the content of the film. In fact, like Lee, he hasn't seen it. Rather, he had issues with the way Lee chose to air his grievances in late December.

In a Tweet last month, Lee wrote: "American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them." The filmmaker declined to elaborate in a later interview, except to say he wouldn't be seeing the film. "I can't speak on it 'cause I'm not going to see it," he said, according to THR.

For his part, Fuqua suggested that Tarantino and "Django" star Jamie Foxx are at very least deserving of the benefit of the doubt -- and perhaps a bit more professionalism.

"If you disagree with the way a colleague did something, call him up, invite him out for a coffee, talk about it. But don't do it publicly," said Fuqua, who knows both Tarantino and Lee but is not close with either. "I don't think Quentin Tarantino has a racist bone in his body. Besides, I'm good friends with ('Django Unchained' star) Jamie Foxx and he wouldn't have anything to do with a film that had anything racist to it."

The Lee-Fuqua back-and-forth is a high-profile illustration about the conflicted feelings many movie-goers - particularly black movie-goers -- seem to be having with "Django Unchained." The crux of the matter: Is it OK to plumb one of the darkest chapters in American history for entertainment value? Or is slavery above such treatment?

In a recent analysis of the controversy, The Wrap pointed out that Ishmael Reed at Speakeasy went as far as to call the film "an abomination" while The Root writer Hillary Crosley, on the other hand, defended the film.

So what's your take? Is "Django Unchained" just entertainment, or should slavery be hands-off for anything but the most serious on-screen treatment? Cast your vote in our poll below: